james.soriano

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 1 July 2009 Issue (Page E-4)

---

When I found out that Michael Jackson died Friday morning, I was at the library, huddled over one of the computers with my blockmates as we waited for our readings. I immediately occupied another unit for myself and spent almost an hour reading about his death and what other people had to say about it. Some of my friends had much to say, and I didn’t know before then that I had peers who were hardcore fans. Even those who weren’t still paid tribute in their own little way, sparing a few words or popping his CD in the car.

It seemed like I was the only one who didn’t have anything to say. To the world, his death came as a violent tremor, the aftershocks of which were felt throughout the world wide web, causing sites to crash and search engines to overload. To me, it was just another death on the headlines. Initially, there is shock—he was a cultural icon, after all—but ultimately, it was something that I couldn’t relate to.

I was never an MJ fan. I was aware of his greatness, but I never had an experience of it. If anything, my awareness of it was peripheral—songs like Beat It and Smooth Criminal I only truly appreciated as covers by contemporary bands. Maybe the King of Pop could be considered as part of my generation, but in my life, it’s like he has always been on the outer fringes of it.

All my knowledge of Michael Jackson as a star and a person I owe to the few songs I have in my iTunes, and to what the media says about him. Maybe that’s unfortunate, because it was only in his latter years (the earlier parts of mine) that he had come to be portrayed as an eccentric lunatic with a history of pedophilia. He was always more Wacko Jacko to me than he was Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, we have always condemned people on the basis of how they appear or what we’ve heard about them.

But based on what I read about him now—funny how in death, all faults are forgiven, if temporarily—it seems that he has always been more the latter than the former. He was a person who found himself at odds with the world and the way he was to live within it. He was eccentric, not only because he purposefully took part in creating his own image, but also because he was judged by the way he chose to find his own happiness. In more ways than I can comprehend, Michael Jackson was complicated, conflicted, and largely misunderstood. I guess that’s the price you pay for such widespread fame.

But maybe the price was too high. I can’t help but relate to the fans out there who felt that he has always been victimized. Living a life under the public eye exerts tremendous pressures, and even more so when it judges you harshly. Michael Jackson started getting addicted to painkillers to deal with the stress of a bad image. Maybe it is sordidly fitting that he died after being injected by one.

The saddest thing of all is the way he had to go; he was a victim to the end. As a child, he was the victim of abuse. As a middle-aged man, he was the victim of disease. In his latter years, he was ultimately the victim of our very own condemnations. But finally, his demise came too early; his death stank of Elvis Presley.

He never had the chance to prove that he was a better man than we all thought. In the face of all the allegations and rumors spun against him, people often forget that he, too, had helped people overcome drug abuse. He, too, contributed funds to charities and hospitals. He, too, called for people to “heal the world, and make it a better place.”

Beyond this, it is through music that Michael Jackson most made a mark on the world. It is to him that the pop industry owes its revitalization. It is to him that performers such as Prince owe their initial and eventual success. It is to him that we all owe the channel that is MTV. And finally, it is to him that we owe Thriller and Billie Jean.

A sports pundit once said about the football legend Maradona: “The people who said terrible things about Maradona are the same people who forget that it is necessary to judge geniuses by their deeds and not by their life.”

If Michael Jackson lived as a performer, then perhaps it is most fitting to judge him by the way he has healed the world through his words and his music.

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 5 November 2008 Issue (Page E-3)

---

In my earlier years, All Saints’ Day didn’t strike me as significant by itself. What gave it value, if there was one, was coming to the province to spend time with my cousins and enjoying a change of scenery. But I saw no point in visiting the cemetery. Why should I have to be dragged there to pay my respects to people (granted, they were relatives) whom I had never even met, and quite possibly, had never given a damn about me?

I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer, but I continued to come along on these visits anyway, if only to observe tradition.

Then when I was nine, my first pet, a poodle named Tanny, died. Her death caused me so much sorrow that I refused to have her buried. Burying her would mean that I would never see her or hold her again. We eventually had to, though. So it was that the days for the dead came to hold its first real significance for me: it was a time to offer a prayer or a moment of silence in honor of my beloved Tanny.

In the years that would follow, I would be provided with more reasons to commemorate it: a pair of rabbits and lovebirds; my grandmother, who endured two years of recurring strokes and heart attacks; my dear grandfather, who died while I was abroad. Most recently, there was my other grandmother, who died on All Saints’ Day last weekend.

It is on occasions like these that I wonder whether there is a point to honoring the dead. What good does remembering really do to them? It’s not like they’ll be brought back to life by it. Nor, if we are to talk about heaven and judgment, will it alter the way their lives played out or the choices that they made. Or, if we were to take it from the opposite spectrum of belief: they’re dead anyway, they can’t care. No, I still don’t see how it benefits the dead to be remembered by those still living.

But if that’s true, why do we spend our lives trying to leave some mark, brand, or impact—in other words, a form of remembrance—on other people’s lives? Why are we so obsessed with remembering and being remembered?

I’m no philosopher, but the answer I came up with is this: our individual lives are but one single, infinitesimal speck in the infinitely boundless dimensions of time and the Universe. Thought of in another way, this means that our lives are meaningless and insignificant. If this is the case, then there is no point in living. Like the stars, our lives will burn brightly for an instant, die out in a blaze of glory, and finally disappear, as if we had never existed.

But just because we are hopelessly small does not mean that we have to be resigned to our own insignificance. Our lives may be tiny, negligible dots against the backdrop of the infinite cosmos, but at least we can make a mark on our fellow dots, however small or fleeting that mark might be. This is where remembering takes significance: we indelibly leave our marks on the lives of the people we have touched. Also, we remember so that we, too, can be remembered. It may be a small consolation, but it is a small (and important!) consolation nonetheless.

Honoring the dead might not do much for those who are already dead, but they do much for those who are still living. It is through those who have run the course of life that we learn how to live ours, and through them that we find the heart to keep on running.

Finally, we can also think about it this way: if all human beings have souls, and souls essentially consist of a person’s thoughts and identity, then what is a soul but a collection of all the memories we have gathered during our lives? Memories, then, are the only things we can bring along with us in the next life.

They are also the only things we truly get to keep of loved ones who have just passed away.

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 29 October 2008 Issue (Page E-3)

---

Halloween is the only time of the year when we can afford to take the notion of death lightly.

This was what I realized after watching my neighbors prepare their spooky decorations, after hearing many of my friends talk about the costumes they plan to wear to parties, and after witnessing the kids trick-or-treating around our village during the annual Halloween celebration which, strangely enough, isn’t usually held on the day itself.

It’s an interesting contradiction of sorts. Sure, when we think Halloween we think of scary apparitions and ghost stories. But we also think of pranks, parties, and pastries. I guess death isn’t as fearsome or painful to think about when we don’t associate it with a sense of loss.

We now associate it with merrymaking and celebration. Halloween is a time to go dress up as your favorite villain or movie-inspired creature and go partying with your friends. It is a time to be lively and to be alive.

But when you think about it, it is also a form of escapism. After all, what is Halloween but a convenient form of recreation to relieve the unpleasantness derived from death?

When we celebrate it, we remove ourselves from the reality that death is often painful, mortifying and incomprehensible. And by turning it into a form that is entertaining, we are able to grasp and cope with it. Perhaps Halloween is also an opiate of the masses.

This is made even more effective by the advent of media and commercialism. After all, our image of Halloween comprises mostly of what the filmmakers and artists in this last century have constructed for us. It has become largely commercialized and tailor-fit to the desires of the market. In this sense, not only have we desensitized ourselves from death’s reality, perhaps we’ve also commodified it.

Hence, it seems to me that whenever we celebrate Halloween, we run the risk of trivializing what it stands for.

’m not saying, though, that we ought not to celebrate it, or that we ought to celebrate it in a particular way. Nor am I saying that it’s bad that we try to associate death with happier things. But I do think that the true spirit of Halloween is lost on most people.

To remember what that is, it might help to go back to what the holiday originally was. In ancient Celtic tradition, it was a festival celebrating the end of harvest season. Since it was also considered the end, or the ‘death’, of the year, the Celts used to believe that the boundary between the living and the deceased would disappear, and spirits could come and be among the living. Thus Halloween, then called Samhain, was a time for the dead to commune with the living and vice versa. It was something that was to be taken very seriously, if in a festive and celebratory manner.

If the eve of Halloween prepared the people of old for the beginning of a new year by marking the end of a cycle, in modern times it prepares us for the morning after. It is, after all, directly followed by All Saints Day and All Souls Day, holidays which commemorate the faithful departed. And the fact that these three holidays are strung together is neither random nor coincidental. These were deliberately situated alongside each other by the Catholic Church.

Since that’s the case, I would like to think that Halloween is a time to remember the importance of honoring our dead and keeping their memory. It doesn’t matter so much if we choose to celebrate it in a particular manner. What matters is that we know what we are celebrating it for.

It is so easy to boil down Halloween to candy apples, jack-o-lanterns, or dressing up as Rihanna from ‘Disturbia’. A large part of what makes Halloween is what media and pop culture has propagated. But what is truly important is to remember that behind the candies, the costumes, and the merrymaking, is the spirit of Halloween.

Halloween is there to celebrate the importance of commemorating death—and therefore, the importance of a meaningful life.